Japan

Located in the heart of Tokyo, just a few steps away from Ginza, the world-famous shopping and entertainment district. Conrad Tokyo boasts rooms furnished with modern decor, award winning restaurants and a 29th-floor spa with beautiful city views. It ranked 1st as the most popular Japanese hotel for international travelers by TripAdvisor 2015.

Shiodome Subway Station and JR Shimbashi Train Station are both located within a 5-minute walk from the hotel. Tokyo Big Sight Exhibition Centre can be reached with a 25-minute monorail ride while the Imperial Palace is a 15-minute drive away.

Rooms at the Conrad are among the largest in Tokyo, and feature panoramic views of Hamarikyu Gardens or Tokyo Bay through floor-to-ceiling windows. Rooms come with a minibar, a flat-screen TV with a VOD system and a DVD player. Also offers a bathroom with rain shower. Wired and wireless internet access is available at an extra charge.

Guests can swim laps in the picturesque free-use indoor pool or work out to views of Tokyo in the spacious fitness centre. Mizuki Spa offers private treatment rooms and a variety of relaxing massages.

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A KEEN canoeist for years, I was delighted to discover on a recent trip to Amami-Oshima island in Kagoshima Prefecture, that it was possible to explore a mangrove forest in Amami’s Sumiyocho district by canoe.

“This is a good tide,” said my guide Kazuhisa Saijo, 53, pointing upstream as I boarded a canoe from a dock at the river mouth. “We are going to a waterway that’s passable only at full tide.

My fellow participants on the 90-minute tour started paddling their one-person canoes. We moved ahead while looking at a mangrove forest on the banks of the river. One of the attractions of canoeing is that the paddler’s eye level is closer to the surface of the water than on a ship, making you feel like a part of nature.

Every tree in the mangrove forest grows in marshes, so these trees take firm root in the soil, with their roots spreading like an octopus’ legs. Even during stormy seas, it’s quiet in the forest, according to Saijo.

“There is no tree named mangrove,” Saijo explained. Mangrove actually refers to trees growing in brackish-water regions, where fresh and salt water are mixed. Around the mouths of the Sumiyogawa and Yakugachigawa rivers, trees grow in clusters on about 71 hectares of land.

This is Japan’s second largest mangrove forest, following that on Iriomote Island in Okinawa Prefecture.